


Fine Days In The West

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Western, Gen, Season/Series 01, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 19:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where John is the lonesome traveller, Sherlock is the local crazy ,and Lestrade is the very long-suffering sheriff.</p><p>AKA the Wild West AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine Days In The West

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloria_scott](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloria_scott/gifts).



> Originally posted on my LJ 7th January 2012 as part of the Sherlockmas Secret Santa 2011 fic exchange.

The sun was beating down on his back. The air felt like every drop of water in the area had been sucked out of it long ago. The town – if you could call it that – looked like it was only still standing because the buildings were leaning on each other, like drunks in every saloon he’d ever walked into.

It was another fine day in the West.

John Watson sighed. “I guess this is our next stop,” he reflected to his horse, before kicking it into weary motion again. They’d been on the road for about a week so far, so no doubt Gladstone was as eager to stop and get a drink as him. He just hoped this place actually had something decent to drink, however unlikely that seemed from the look of it.

Still, at least as he rode into town the locals didn’t actively glare at him as if strangers were the Devil’s work, which definitely put it above some of the dives back the way he had come. John liked to think he was the friendly type – or at least not the ‘if you look at me I will shoot you in the face’ type – but some places could really be trying that way. It really was rather nice to make it all the way to the saloon without having to keep a hand on his gun at all times. Didn’t hurt to not make the wrong impression.

After tying Gladstone by the water trough – and giving it a slightly longing look himself, despite it all – he pushed his way through the double doors and into the saloon. Which, unsurprisingly, looked like pretty much every single one he had ever been in. Apparently people on the frontier figured they already had quite enough variety just from trying to survive out here; at least they could count on the provider of alcohol for some stability. There was the piano-player, the crowd of cattle-ranchers, those like John just passing through, and that one guy sat at the bar that everybody seemed to be keeping their distance from.

Actually, quite a wide distance. That was a bit odd.

Keeping his head down, John made his way to the bar. And there was something else welcomingly normal: a broad-shouldered and beaming man who was probably much more aware of what was going on than he seemed. Taking his drink with a smile, John took a sip and tried not to groan at just how good it tasted after all that time on the road. Not a bad place, all in all.

“Shot or natural causes?”

At first John thought he’d imagined it. However, when he looked around cautiously he saw his sole companion at the bar watching him intently.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Your regiment left you behind. Was it because you were shot or did you develop an illness?”

John stared at him, open-mouthed. “How did – ” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Look, just… Leave me alone. All right?” For emphasis, he picked up his drink and walked over to an unoccupied table. Great. Granted, the man could have just had a very – _very_ – lucky guess, but John didn’t travel as much as he did because he liked people knowing everything about him.

He was just getting towards the bottom of the bottle when both of the doors were thrown open and the music suddenly cut out. Looking over in confusion, he saw that the piano player was much more interested in the new arrival – as was everyone else in the saloon, apparently.

Not that he was anything much to look at: worn down, and looking at the end of his rope. Rather unimpressive, actually. However, as he passed, people pushed their chairs away from him. Only the man at the bar looked uninterested. A shame, since the stranger was apparently very interested in him.

“I didn’t kill those people, Mr Holmes.” Even his voice sounded oddly unassuming. “I talked to them, and they killed themselves.”

Holmes didn’t even look around.

“But I’ll still swing for it, thanks to you. So I reckon I should return the favour.”

With that, he pulled his gun, and aimed it at the back of Holmes’ head.

John looked around in disbelief. Everybody was either watching with obvious interest, watching with bored resignation, or watching their drinks. Nobody seemed particularly intrigued by the idea of _doing_ something.

Damn it all to Hell. He’d wanted to keep his head low. If there was one thing he didn’t like, it was attention.

However, he liked seeing someone shot for no good reason and without help even less.

“Oh, I think I’m going to enjoy this,” the man announced helpfully and cocked his pistol.

A shot rang out.

The man blinked at his hand in confusion. His chosen victim finally turned his head and also regarded it, with more idle interest than anything stronger, before letting his eyes drift down to where the pistol now lay on the ground, then up to where John was sitting, gun still out and smoke gently wafting from the muzzle. 

The would-be shooter also looked at him, but more in confusion – confusion that very quickly gave way to anger. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

John raised his eyebrows. “I could say the same for you.”

He could feel the tension practically thrumming in the air, and was almost disappointed to find how much he didn’t care. Almost.

When the man threw the first punch, he really _really_ didn’t care.

Apparently, neither did the rest of the saloon. People materialised from what seemed like nowhere, for some reason deciding to focus on Holmes rather than the man who was apparently supposed to be hung for murder. That just made John all the more determined, though. He could be like that.

He cracked his knuckles. Just another day on the frontier, really.

“Do I get a name?” he asked when he found himself back to back with the man he was supposed to be helping – who looked either bored or mildly surprised, depending on the angle.

After a pause – and ducking a punch after the pause – he said, “Sherlock Holmes.”

John nodded. He would have held his hand out or made some other gesture, just to be polite, but he was a bit busy grabbing the stool somebody had thought would make a good blunt instrument. “John Watson.”

There was another pause, where Sherlock looked oddly like he thought he should say something but wasn’t entirely sure what, which only made John feel awkwardly as if he should instead. It wasn’t helped by the fact that only more people seemed to be joining in – all on the other side, as far as John could tell.

“Are you always this popular?” he asked about five minutes later, trapping a man’s arm under his and elbowing him in the face.

“Yes,” Sherlock said simply, fighting slightly more elegantly and possibly causing slightly longer-lasting damage. He apparently didn’t have any qualms about making people’s limbs make familiar cracking sounds, not to mention he seemed to be targeting very certain points that invariably led to men suddenly dropping out. John, on the other hand, preferred to rely on the same moves that had worked a hundred times over in fights across the West. 

Like every fight in every saloon John had been in, it soon became clear that there were plenty of offshoots around them which had nothing to do with Sherlock. However, this did not mean that they were exactly short of opponents. If anything, this just made John more determined to stay on this side: same as when he had pulled that trigger, he never liked seeing a man fight alone. Slightly disturbingly, he found that he was falling into an easy rhythm with Sherlock, somehow knowing where he needed to be and finding that Sherlock seemed to as well.

It wasn’t something John was particularly proud of, but he did find the world easier when he had a side to fight for. Out here, that tended to be all that mattered.

Eventually he found himself being forcibly dragged off a man – the sort that looked like he should be called ‘Beefy Joe’ - and when he spun around he was just able to hold back his fist when he caught the glint of a star-shaped badge.

Wonderful.

“Easy there,” he heard dimly, “you don’t have to take on everybody in here.” It was hard to make out the exact words because the rest of the fight didn’t care about losing one more opponent.

He heard a sigh, and then the loud retort of a pistol being fired. In an instant, the whole place froze, almost comically so. A quick glance around showed a lot more people now present than had been before. So no surprise there then.

“Alright, fun’s over,” the sheriff announced, to the sorts of groans you might expect from five-year-olds. “Who started this one, then?”

There seemed to be little disagreement: most people pointed at Sherlock, save for the few close by who indicated John. When the sheriff looked to him, he pointed at the man unconscious on the floor. “He pulled the gun.”

The sheriff raised an eyebrow, looking from the man to John, to Sherlock, and then back at John. “Who are you?”

“John Watson.” After a thought, he added, “Doctor.”

Now the second eyebrow joined the first. “Right,” he said, looking slightly surprised. “You mind if I have a word?”

“I didn’t – ”

“Nothing bad,” he assured him. “I like to know anybody new in town. You can call me ‘Sheriff’ if you actually want to show any respect, but since you’re with Sherlock, Lestrade’s fine.” 

There was something else in the way he said that, but the adrenaline was still drowning out any serious analysis John might have tried. He didn’t like the idea. Then again, he didn’t like the idea of staying in the saloon either – he was under no illusions that the fight wouldn’t break out again the moment the sheriff was gone – so he forced a casual shrug and said, “Sure.”

“Excellent. You too, Sherlock.”

Sherlock looked even more reluctant than John felt, although that might have been because he looked halfway to an honest-to-God pout. Still, apparently the sheriff took that as confirmation – either that or it wasn’t up for debate – and announced to the rest watching them, “Show’s over. Get back to what you were doing.” 

There seemed to be some confusion over whether this meant fighting or drinking.

Before John could leave, the bartender caught his arm. “Come back anytime. Any drink, on the house,” he informed him with a wink.

“What?” John said in disbelief.

“Hey, any friend of Sherlock’s is a friend of mine, let me tell you that.”

“I’m not sure I’m his – ”

“This man,” the bartender went on, ignoring John’s protest, “saved my life, you know. Without him, I’d’ve had a noose around my neck. For _murder_.” 

“As opposed to having to move here to escape your last town,” Sherlock observed.

“Hey, my life is mine, and folks ‘round here don’t mind so long as I keep the drinks coming.” He turned the full force of his smile on John. “Name’s Angelo. Like I said, come back anytime.”

“Um, thanks,” John managed. Fortunately he didn’t have to think of anything else to say – or listen to, since Angelo seemed the kind of bartender who was hard to stop once he got going – since Sherlock had apparently decided the conversation was over and swept out of the saloon, leaving John hurrying after him.

Outside, to his surprise, Lestrade seemed a lot friendlier than he’d expected.

“What was that about, then?”

John was confused, until he realised he wasn’t the one being addressed. 

“The stagecoach driver,” Sherlock said in a dismissive voice. “The one you weren’t able to catch.”

“There’s a lot of country around here; it’s easy for a man to lose himself. Especially with a little help from a friend.”

There was something about the way he said ‘a friend’ that caught John’s attention. However, before he could ask, he suddenly found the sheriff focusing on him. “So. How about that chat?”

“Just me?”

“After that display, you seem someone worth getting to know.” John didn’t miss the look exchanged between the other two, even if – once again – he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. However, considering the fact that he was apparently about to be led off by the sheriff, he didn’t particularly feel like trying to figure this one out.

After a moment, Sherlock just turned and strode off without another word. John stared after him, trying not to feel slightly abandoned. Not that they’d talked much or anything, but you did tend to expect something after both saving a man’s life and then fighting half a saloon alongside him.

“Don’t worry about him,” Lestrade said, “he does that.” Then he gestured to his left, pointing to a building at the end of the street. “Not far. I just don’t think it’s a good idea taking you back in there right now.” 

John could only nod mutely.

\-----------

John was slightly surprised to find a woman in the room already. Not because it was a woman in a sheriff’s office – John had met a few too many sheriffs in his time – but because she was dressed in trousers with a gun clearly holstered at her side. Generally women who looked like her were riding around like John and causing trouble, not apparently working alongside people of authority. She looked up as they entered. “Did you find out what it was about?”

“Sherlock. What else did you expect?”

She rolled her eyes. “What did the freak do now?”

“The freak?” John repeated in disbelief.

“Stagecoach driver pulled a gun on him. Apparently John here decided to come to his defence.” He turned to John. “This is Sally Donovan. My deputy.”

Clearly Donovan was used to people staring, because the moment John opened his mouth she demanded, “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” John said quickly. He didn’t like the way her hand twitched readily by her holster. “Just… ‘Freak’?”

“Wow. You must be new in town.” 

Lestrade coughed to catch their attention. “Donovan, if you could give us a minute?”

She nodded, only pausing on her way out, framed in the doorway, to give John a significant look. “Look, do yourself a favour: stay away from Sherlock Holmes. Freak’s nothing good, I can tell you that.” And she was gone.

John stared after her. “She’s a woman.”

“Yes, she is,” Lestrade said, with the air of a man who would only make a thing about this if you did.

“But… I thought…”

“Look.” Lestrade set his gun down on the desk and turned to face John, hands on his hips. “She may be a woman, but she’s also the only person in this whole damn town I trust to watch my back _and_ not shoot it. Damn good in a crisis too. Any problems?”

John looked back at him, and then slowly smiled. “No.”

“Good. So,” Lestrade said slowly, sitting down in the chair and putting his feet up on the desk, “who are you then?”

“I already told you. John Watson.”

“Yeah, I know that. Doctor.” Striking a match on the edge of the desk, he lit a cigarette. “Pretty good with your gun though.”

“I’ve been in enough battles.”

“Soldier too?” Lestrade took a contemplative draw.

“Is there actually a problem?”

“Not sure. What’s your interest in Sherlock Holmes?” At John’s confused expression, he shrugged. “Okay then… What’s Sherlock’s interest in you?”

“What makes you think there is any?”

“Instinct,” Lestrade said simply. “Just wanted to get an idea of what I might be dealing with. I seem to spend half my time dealing with him.”

“You mean fights?”

“Sometimes.” Lestrade hesitated, then added, “I think you’ll find out what else.” He gestured towards the door. “Might as well see where you are tomorrow.”

John stared at him. “That’s all?”

“For now.”

\----------

Still feeling dazed by the surreal – and rather short – conversation, John could only be a little bit surprised when he emerged once more into the sunlight to find Sherlock standing by the door. “Waiting long?” 

“Hardly. I know how long Lestrade’s little talks usually take.” And then he was off again. John blinked, and then, not having much idea of what to do otherwise, hurried after him.

“Who is he?”

“Who?” Sherlock looked genuinely curious.

“The man who tried to shoot you.”

“Oh.” Now he just looked disappointed, as if he’d been expecting something more interesting than a question about his potential murderer. “Not sure.”

“You don’t know somebody trying to kill you?”

“Most of this town would probably try to kill me, given half the chance,” he said casually, as if this were both obvious and natural. “I meant that I don’t know his _name_. I know precisely who he is. Poisoner; killed four people before I caught him. Apparently he didn’t appreciate it.”

Something occurred to John. “How’d you catch him, if he was poisoning them? And why you? Do you work for the sheriff?” That might explain why Lestrade had seemed on Sherlock’s side, against the opinion of nearly everybody else. However, almost as soon as he said the words he realised how unlikely the idea was. The man standing before him hardly sounded like somebody remotely official, even if his voice sounded far more…educated than John had been expecting from anyone out here. Still, he didn’t seem like anybody John could describe, so that guess was as good as any.

Besides, rather than look dismissive, Sherlock just seemed amused – probably by some private joke. “In a sense. You could say he consults me.”

John looked at him sceptically. “What else could I say?”

“Whatever you wish. Most people do.”

“Right.” He looked behind him. “Look, it was nice meeting you, but I should probably, you know, find somewhere to stay. It would be nice not to sleep outside again.”

“No problem at all. You can stay with me.”

“What?” John was fairly certain they’d missed part of the conversation somewhere. 

“I have a room nearby. Strangely, nobody ever seems to want to take anything in the vicinity.” John didn’t have to look at his face to know that it wasn’t so strange. “Mrs Hudson will be fine with it.”

John couldn’t even manage anything beyond a slightly resigned “Will she?” Sherlock didn’t say anything. “We don’t know each other.”

“And yet you at least think you saved my life, so that hardly seems a priority.”

“I – ‘Think’?” He shook his head. “Sherlock, _we don’t know each other_.”

Sherlock paused for a moment, and suddenly John found himself the subject of a rather uncomfortably intense gaze. Then, steadily and apparently without needing to breathe, he started to speak, suddenly seeming far more animated than John had seen him so far.

“I know you’re a doctor, but you’ve also seen battles, something more than the average drunken brawl. Soldier too, then. I know you were separated from your regiment after being wounded in the left shoulder, and you’ve been travelling the frontier ever since, never staying in one place for too long. You pick up girls but you’ve never stayed with one for long. You could go home – somewhere far more civilised than here – but for some reason you’ve decided not to.”

“How could you – ”

“You’ve been on the move a while now – your clothes have been patched with different colours of thread and types of material – and the amount of repairs shows you don’t settle long enough to pick up proper replacements – a quick fix and then on the road again. While you do approximately half of the repairs yourself, the changing styles of stitches show that’s not always the case. You pick up women then, some of whom mend your clothes, but they don’t stay for long – or, based on other evidence, _you_ don’t. You must have been left behind by your regiment for some reason, and your shooting suggests it wasn’t because you were incapable, so you were incapacitated. Probably you weren’t expected to survive. When I first saw you I wasn’t sure precisely how, but then you favoured your right arm throughout that entire fight. Conclusion: ex-soldier unable to readjust after war and hence wandering the frontier, trying to ‘do good’ in some way fitting your standards.”

John became aware that not only had Sherlock finished, but he himself was now openly staring at him. “That…was amazing,” he managed.

For some reason Sherlock actually looked confused. “Do you think so?”

“Yes. It was extraordinary.”

If Sherlock was in fact capable of looking wrong-footed, it was happening now. “That’s not what people normally say.”

“And what do people normally say?”

“‘Piss off’.” Sherlock seemed to consider this, then allowed, “Or they try to shoot me.”

\----------

Mrs Hudson had turned out to be a kindly middle-aged lady who liked Sherlock, making her the single rarest individual John had ever encountered on the frontier. For some reason she treated Sherlock like her son, or at least a beloved nephew, and seemed delighted on meeting John because it would “do Sherlock good” or something else equally terrifying. 

While the townspeople had seemed perfectly fine with a stranger riding into town, Sherlock was another story. If John had been planning to stay, this might have been a problem.

The mystery of Mrs Hudson’s warm greeting for a man apparently normally welcomed with the choice between a fist and a gun was either resolved or deepened when Sherlock referred to his role in ensuring her husband’s hanging. John wasn’t entirely sure which.

And now he found himself standing around awkwardly in the middle of a room that clearly wasn’t accustomed to accommodating guests. Or humanity.

“Take the bed,” Sherlock told him. 

“You mean your bed?”

“I don’t use it.”

John looked at the bed. To be fair, it didn’t look particularly used. At least as a bed. However, it did look as if it did a good service as a surface for storing pretty much anything imaginable. There were the more reasonable items, such as bullets and boots; there were also the more unusual, such as several knives and what looked like a woman’s shoe and some make-up; and some downright unnerving, such as something that looked a bit too much like a hand for John to want to look more closely.

He should get out. Now. Surely there must have been somewhere else to crash in this town. Hell, he seriously doubted anybody could blame him. Judging by the scene from barely a few hours ago, Sherlock wasn’t exactly a valued member of the community.

And maybe that was why, instead of running, he just heard himself say, “I think I’ll take the chair.”

\----------

_Gunshots. Explosions. The screams of men, on both sides, even though he was only supposed to worry about his own. The soldier next to him – God, barely old enough to shave – went down, and so did he, because he wouldn’t let this happen, except he didn’t check behind him, didn’t wait, and as he rose to grab the bandages there was another shot, louder than the rest, and a tearing pain in his shoulder as he screamed and –_

John jerked awake, one hand pushing his hat back off his face, the other already holding his pistol at the ready. Staring around him – possibly a bit wildly – he had the familiar disorienting few moments of wondering where he’d ended up this time. Somewhere safe? Somewhere dangerous?

He caught sight of the bed, and the memory obligingly returned that it was a little bit of both.

However, his unexpected lodging partner was nowhere to be seen, and at least there was a roof over his head, so John had definitely had worse awakenings. Still on his guard, he nevertheless let himself relax as much as he could, cautiously returning his pistol to its holster. Slowly the adrenaline from his abrupt waking drained away, leaving him with the equally familiar aches and pains of a night spent in a piece of furniture designed more for sitting than sleeping, and barely that to be honest. Wincing slightly, he looked around cautiously, but Sherlock didn’t seem to be around. Possibly that was a good thing.

“Oh, don’t worry dear, he just popped out early,” was all Mrs Hudson told him as he stumbled downstairs – admittedly without his having asked.

“Do you know where?”

She shook her head. “I’m not his mother, or his housekeeper.”

“Right.” This left John wondering who she was then.

Making his uneasy way past Mrs Hudson and her enigmatic comments, he opened the door and was confronted by a rather fine and definitely impressive coach and horses. 

As he stood there in disbelief, the driver got down and opened the door. “After you, sir.”

The last time John checked, he was travelling the great western frontier. Why did he suddenly feel like he was in London?

“Thanks,” he lied, “but I’m sure I don’t need the ride.”

“I don’t think she’s going to leave without you.”

He blinked. _She?_ Cautiously he stepped up and looked inside, to be confronted by a woman in a far more elegant state of dress than she had any right to out here, smiling at him in what was really only a polite fashion, however dazzling it might be. “Dr Watson. Won’t you join me?”

Once again, trying not to offend more people than he already had, John tried to seem grateful, but “I don’t make a habit of getting into coaches with complete strangers.”

“But you do stay with them?”

He blinked at her again, not entirely sure what to say to that. “Well, I…” he tried, before she interrupted him in what was probably an act of mercy. 

“I’m sorry, but my employer did make it clear that this wasn’t optional.”

“Your employer?” Just what kind of town had he stumbled into?

Her smile never wavered for a moment as she gestured at the seat opposite. “If you please, Dr Watson.” She didn’t even bother making it sound like a question.

John looked from her, to her driver, to her driver’s gun, and then back to her in time to see her shift enough for metal to gleam significantly from somewhere amongst her skirts.

He felt for his own guns, safe at his sides. “Well, let’s go then.”

\----------

John wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been expecting, but whatever it had been, he could safely say that it wasn’t to be driven to the probably largest and definitely most expensive building in town. Somebody had actually spent money on it, beyond the usual ‘however much a pile of wood costs’ figure. When he turned to stare at his ‘companion’ - she’d provided the name Anthea on being asked, possibly to make him feel slightly less uneasy and if so not really succeeding – she simply shrugged and indicated the door.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No.” She said it as if this was obvious. Perhaps it was. Regardless, once he stepped down from the coach it immediately moved away, leaving him feeling more than a little out of place – a feeling which only intensified when a man appeared in the doorway to show him through room after room of elegance that far better suited somewhere a little closer to civilisation. John recalled ‘Anthea’’s fine dress, and rubbed self-consciously at a stain on his sleeve he couldn’t actually date. You tended to forget those sorts of things on the road. Washing your clothes came somewhere below, say, not getting bitten by snakes.

Eventually he found himself walking into yet another room only for the doors to be closed behind him, leaving him stranded. He spun around, staring at the dark wood, and then slowly turned back to examine his surroundings – or at least he would have, had he not been distracted by the fact that he had apparently reached the mysterious individual who liked to dispatch women in coaches to kidnap strangers.

“Ah, Dr Watson,” the man said. “I hope you had a pleasant ride.”

“Is that how you normally get people to visit?”

“Well, it can sometimes be necessary. When you are the mayor, some people can be strangely reluctant to meet you without…prompting.” He indicated the chair on the other side of his desk. “Will you take a seat?”

“No thanks,” John replied, crossing the room cautiously, “I’d rather stand.”

“Of course.” Strangely, he really did look as if he had been expecting that. Or perhaps his face had simply frozen into a single expression of smug superiority. Anything was possible. “Tea?”

“Look, do you mind telling me what you want?”

For a moment it looked as if that smile might falter, even vanish altogether, but it quickly rallied and he once again simply looked amused, as if John was some new form of entertainment. “Very well,” the mayor said regally, sitting himself back comfortably in what was really a much too large chair considering the town outside. “Would you mind telling me the nature of your relationship with Sherlock Holmes?”

John…probably should have expected that. “What?”

“Now, let’s not play games, Dr Watson. Within your first hour of entering our fair town,” John narrowed his eyes as he searched for sarcasm, but either there genuinely wasn’t any or this man was (more likely) very good at hiding it, “you sprang to Sherlock’s defence. After a meeting with our sheriff and his rather opinionated deputy, during which you no doubt received a strong impression of popular feeling, you nevertheless agreed to share lodgings with Sherlock. I believe I am correct so far.” Like ‘Anthea’, he didn’t bother making such statements sound like questions. John was slightly disturbed by the fact that he also seemed to be consulting a notebook as he stated the facts.

“I slept on his chair for one night,” John corrected, slightly rebelliously. He had never been very good with authority after the battlefields, and particularly this kind of lazy opulence. Some things he’d just wanted to leave behind.

“Which is approximately ten times the amount of contact Sherlock normally permits, at a conservative estimate. Which brings me to ask again: what is the nature of your relationship?”

“Why the hell should I tell you?”

Abruptly the mayor’s eyes hardened, and John hastily reassessed his earlier impression of laziness. In fact, they never softened after that, no matter how much otherwise the mayor’s behaviour remained unchanged.

“Very well then. If it remains as much a mystery to you as it is to me, I will simply make my offer and we need say no more until another time.”

John frowned. “What?”

“Nothing much,” the mayor said airily, as if this was all perfectly normal. “A sum of money in exchange for information.”

“What?”

He glanced up at John. “Dear me. Is this repetition normal for you?”

“You want me to spy on Sherlock?”

“Not ‘spy’, not really. Not if that makes you feel uncomfortable.”

“‘Uncomfortable’?” John was just a bit too surprised and also far too indignant to care about the repetition now. “Why would I do that? Why would you want me to do that? As far as I’ve heard, he hasn’t done anything _wrong_ , or else Lestrade would have done something by now!”

“Ah yes,” the mayor murmured, “our ever faithful sheriff.” Raising his eyes to John’s, he announced, “I assure you my motives are far from deplorable. I simply worry about him. Constantly. Family is so important, and especially out… _here_ ,” and he said that last word with an obvious sniff of disgust. John might have pondered that if his mind hadn’t caught on something earlier.

“Sherlock’s family?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes, unfortunately. I’m afraid he’s always been rather resentful of me. Still, one must expect such things from the younger brother, mustn’t one?”

John could actually feel his mind screeching to a halt, rearing like a scared horse. “Sherlock’s brother is the mayor,” he muttered to himself.

“Don’t worry, you’re hardly the first to be amazed by the fact,” he was assured in a way which would probably be reassuring if it hadn’t been such a mix of patronisation and calculation. “Surely you can now understand my concern? Mere information can be such a comfort.”

John thought about ‘Harry’, before she’d run off, and then the slippery slope he’d seen so many times out here. He thought about the fact that he’d only just met Sherlock. And he thought about how much he wanted to punch this man in the face.

Instead of acting on that last part, he just uttered a phrase he was fairly certain had never been spoken aloud within these walls.

The mayor actually looked disappointed. “Such a pity. You will let me know whether you change your mind.”

John didn’t even dignify that with so much as a nod; he simply turned and walked out.

\----------

John refused the offer of a lift – quite emphatically, actually. Not just because he wasn’t entirely sure where he wanted to go – he hadn’t even been in this bizarre town twenty-four hours yet, for God’s sake – but also because he didn’t want to be any more involved with the mayor than he already had been. While he was very aware he’d only just met Sherlock – in relative terms – he liked to go with his instincts on these things and had decided he most definitely preferred him to an official with a penchant for bribing people to spy on his own brother. John could be strange like that.

However, when he emerged, he found of all people the sheriff waiting for him.

“What _is_ this?”

“I told you: I just want to talk,” Lestrade told him with a smile.

“Again?” John glanced behind him at the now-closed doors. “Why is everybody so interested? Don’t you have fights here?”

“Oh, all the time. Just we don’t normally get people fighting specifically on Sherlock’s side.”

“And that means everybody in town’s trying to get a private chat with me?”

Lestrade laughed, gesturing behind him with his head. “Come on, before Mycroft thinks of something else to ask you. Never met a man more suspicious of what his brother was doing behind his back. He offer you money?”

“Yeah.”

“He does that.”

John shot him a sideways glance as they fell into step. “You too?”

“Of course. I’m the sheriff, and I also like to keep an eye on him. Sometimes Sherlock even has a conversation with me.” Lestrade caught John’s look. “I didn’t take it,” he assured him. “I’m trying to set a standard out here. Some sheriffs might be as corrupt as anything, but as far as I’m concerned you can’t ask people to do anything you wouldn’t yourself. Besides, I generally don’t trust men who claim to just be the mayor when even the governor answers to them. Wouldn’t be surprised if it went beyond that, actually.”

“I’m not surprised,” John said faintly, and found that he wasn’t kidding. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“You’re looking for Sherlock?”

John considered this. Up until then, he hadn’t really thought about it – he’d vaguely figured he would wake up this morning and go and find something to do that didn’t involve getting into fights on strangers’ behalves – but now he found himself saying, “Sure. Why not?”

“Then you’re headed the same way as me. If a simple gunfight didn’t kill someone, you know Sherlock’s going to be there. Which means I have to get there before somebody else dies.”

\----------

John was a little surprised. Not that he’d expected anything much, but he had thought Sherlock would at least acknowledge him. Then again, he looked a little bit too interested in the dead body to really say anything.

John had seen his fair share of bodies. However, in general they had died either ‘honourably’ – or in the middle of battle, which was what his superiors meant; of thirst after losing their way; after a stand-off in the street; or swinging from the noose. This one did not meet any of the standard categories. 

He’d been shot, unsurprisingly for a death out here, but in the back of the head, and as soon as they had entered the ill-fated house Sherlock had started on Lestrade about how the shot must have been made from outside, and there were signs that the dead man had been talking to somebody else at the time, and John was slightly alarmed to see Sherlock looking far more interested now than when a man had been aiming a gun at the back of his own head. He could almost understand why Mycroft might be concerned enough to pay somebody to spy on him. Almost.

Apparently frustrated with Lestrade’s higher concern about treating the body with respect and suchlike, Sherlock threw himself onto the floor, examining the fatal wound with far more interest than anybody should ever examine gaping holes in men’s heads – certainly to the point where it was very clear that neither John nor Lestrade existed for him anymore.

“Hello again,” John tried. Nothing.

“You do this often?” Just a quiet grunt and a shake of the head, as if trying to ignore a fly.

“So,” he started, “I just met your brother.” 

Surprisingly, Sherlock noticeably tried to hide a flinch at the reference. “How much did he offer you?”

John hesitated. “You were expecting him to make an offer?”

“My brother always does. Anybody who might be able to give him information. He’s rather remarkably paranoid about what I might get up to without his _supervision_.” He said ‘supervision’ in the same way that John might have said, for instance, ‘dysentery’.

“You really think that?” Not that John blamed him. Mycroft certainly hadn’t seemed the relaxed type.

“I moved to the frontier to get away from my family. He coincidentally became the mayor of the very town where I eventually settled. What do you think?”

Well, that was… There was really nothing to say to that.

“I didn’t take the money.”

“Shame, you could use it.” 

“Excuse me?”

“Your clothes,” Sherlock murmured, producing what looked like a pencil to lift something from the ground, “your lifestyle. Bullets cost money.”

“I…” John took a deep breath. “Do you mind not doing that while you’re doing…this,” he finished lamely, realising he didn’t really have a word for what Sherlock was saying to him or whatever the hell he was looking for here.

“Problem?”

John stared at him incredulously, and slowly pointed at the corpse lying between them. “There’s a dead body there.”

“Perfectly sound analysis.”

“Analysis? Sherlock, he’s _dead_. And you’re just going to stare at him?”

“No,” Sherlock said, as if that would be madness. At last.

“Good, because – ”

“I am going to _observe_ him, and then _deduce_ what happened.”

This said, with the definite air of a man who would put up with no further distractions, Sherlock turned back to his ‘work’. For want of anything else, John just stared.

“You’re insane.”

Sherlock glanced up long enough to give him an odd, lop-sided smirk. To his surprise, John found himself automatically smiling back. Why the hell was that?

“As I said before: perfectly sound analysis.”

He met and held John’s eyes for a beat, unexpectedly not immediately returning to his examination. John felt a rush of familiar warmth – as if something was falling into place, something mad but undeniably real.

However, then a voice rang out from behind them, breaking the moment. “Come to gloat, heathen?” 

Sherlock just rolled his eyes, looking back down at the body. “Perfect,” he muttered.

John looked over to in confusion to see a man in clerical dress framed dramatically in the doorway, a rather unreligious sneer on his face. While John liked to think that he was still a Christian man, he was slightly alarmed to feel an instinctive dislike, man of the cloth or not.

“Father Jonathan,” he heard Lestrade say. “That was fast.”

“I was granted our God’s speed,” the clergyman intoned in the sort of voice better suited to the pulpit than a room with three men and a dead body on the outskirts of town. “I knew that the local heretic would already be here, to desecrate the body.”

“Anderson, shut up,” Sherlock announced. “You’re lowering the intelligence of the entire room.”

He gasped. “You hear how he speaks to a representative of the Lord? My good sheriff, clearly this man is a threat. We have already heard him speak of witchcraft – ”

“ _Science_ ,” Sherlock interrupted. “There’s no such thing as witchcraft. Or whatever you claim to represent.”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade interrupted. “Play nice.” He looked back at Anderson, who looked apoplectic with rage. “He does get results, Father.”

“That is what he wants you to think! That is the Devil’s way!” Anderson practically snarled. 

Lestrade looked uncomfortable, torn between his religion, calming down and not alienating a key member of the community, and his need to get answers. “Look, Father, I assure you he will be out of here soon enough.” He shot Sherlock a glare. “Two minutes,” he hissed, before turning back. “Of course I’ll let you exorcise the building afterwards.” Moving up to Anderson, he put his arm around him, and slowly guided him out. “But first, I wanted to ask you about…” Unfortunately John never caught what was diverting enough to distract him, as they stepped outside and the door shut behind them.

“Why am I not surprised the local clergy hates you?”

“Because I try to actually catch criminals when they weren’t caught in the act?”

“By poking around corpses.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

John frowned. “What he said… You don’t do the Devil’s work, do you?” He tried to laugh it off, but stopped in the face of the heat of Sherlock’s scornful glare.

“You heard my reasoning. You know I don’t employ arcane, outdated and nonexistent methods. I just use my eyes. For that, I’m a Devil-worshipping freak.”

With that, he turned back to his work. And it was work; John was starting to see that.

“Lestrade doesn’t seem to think so. And there’s your brother.”

Sherlock picked up a ring from the floor and examined it. “Kindly don’t mention Mycroft when I’m trying to think.”

“Right.” John looked around uncomfortably, then coughed. “Do you actually need me here?”

“Not really,” Sherlock said bluntly, then suddenly looked up at him. “Wait.” Carefully he replaced the ring, then slowly stood up, circling the body. “There was someone else here,” he announced. “Besides the one who shot him. Nobody raised the alarm straightaway. This man knew him, but he was scared – he paced back and forth, and fiddled with his ring.” Sherlock indicated where it had fallen. “But he must have felt safe if he let him into the building. Oh!” He pointed to where a pistol was still clenched in his hand – Sherlock had been rather dismissive at the mention of ‘suicide’ though. “He held a gun to his visitor’s head, so he assumed he was safe. Which was when the shooter took him out – stationed close to the house.” He indicated the window. “No obvious signs, but he must have been to make the shot to kill him instantly, which he must have done because _he_ never shot at his visitor.”

“Not necessarily.”

Sherlock frowned, apparently not happy at being interrupted. “What?”

“You’re not a good shot, are you?”

Sherlock might have looked as if he hadn’t heard, if John hadn’t seen him stiffen.

“I mean, you’re not bad, but you’re not good. Right?”

Sherlock scowled at him, before looking away. “Is that relevant?”

“Only because I know I could do it from further away than that. You just have to keep your hand level, compensate for wind speed, all that.”

Sherlock looked through the window, then down at the body. Without a word he paced across the room, knelt down, and before John could stop him he actually lifted up the head to look more closely at the wound. John was a doctor, at least by training, and even he wasn’t sure he’d do that. Especially with a corpse.

“Hmph.” Sherlock looked up at him, seeming more annoyed than anything else. “That would be consistent with the wound.”

John smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“Lucky guess,” Sherlock muttered. “How many people could make that shot? Hypothetically?”

John felt rather flattered to be consulted. “Not many.”

“But you could?”

“I’m good.” He looked Sherlock right in the eye. “Very good, actually.”

“So whoever was here, he knew what would happen, and happens to employ someone as good as you think you are.” John might have reacted to that, except Sherlock’s eyes had suddenly lit up. “Oh,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I believe I know who did this.”

“Who?”

Sherlock opened his mouth, looked up at him…and then, rather uncharacteristically, closed it again. “No one of importance to you,” was all he said, before suddenly standing and sweeping dramatically out of the building. John was just slightly too slow in following him, only catching something that sounded like “-arty” and seeing Sherlock move past a Lestrade who looked rather worried. 

“Something wrong?”

Lestrade was frowning after Sherlock. “Local problem,” he said. 

“…Right.” John glanced over at Anderson, already muttering prayers over the house, and asked what had been preying on his mind ever since getting here. “Why do you let him do this?”

Lestrade sighed. “Because I’m desperate,” he said honestly. “This is my town, and the people here don’t always die the way they should. God help me, but Sherlock’s who I need if I want to actually do my job. Besides,” he added, “it means he doesn’t get bored. Trust me, that’s the last thing we want.” He jerked his head after Sherlock. “Speaking of, you’d best hurry after him – I need to keep the Father happy.”

Reluctantly John did so, if only because Sherlock could go at quite a pace when he wanted to. “What is it?”

“Moriarty,” Sherlock murmured. 

“What’s Moriarty?”

Sherlock looked down at him, seeming slightly surprised to see John there. Then he shook his head. “I told you: my own concern.”

“That’s not quite what you said,” John muttered, but glancing up at Sherlock’s expression he decided to drop it for the moment. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked what he saw.

“So,” he said casually, trying to change the subject, “what do you do to pass the time around here?”

“Observation.”

“What?”

\----------

Sherlock apparently had an inability to go, well, anywhere without getting in a fight. John supposed it was probably thanks to his winning personality. So the results of their repairing to the saloon, on multiple occasions, were rather inevitable.

Still, Lestrade was surprisingly friendly, especially for a sheriff, and it meant the last several days had hardly been boring. Funnily enough, John had the feeling Sherlock saw it that way too.

Somehow it only seemed natural to keep trailing back to Mrs Hudson’s rooms with Sherlock. John never got around to searching for alternative accommodation, and the chair really wasn’t that bad.

Apparently John had had a few too many last night though, because on about the fifth day in town he woke up with the sun distinctly higher in the sky than ‘early morning’ and with the horrible feeling he had missed something.

Stumbling downstairs, he was slightly surprised to see Mrs Hudson loading a shotgun. “Did I miss something?”

She smiled up at him. “Oh, just being prepared, dear. Sherlock got a note this morning – he’s over at Angelo’s, I told him I’d send you over.”

“What sort of note?”

She hesitated, before saying soothingly, even though she was clearly unsettled, “Oh, just a threat.”

“But doesn’t Sherlock get threats all the time?”

Mrs Hudson paused again. For some reason this made John far more nervous than anything else. “I’m sure it’s alright,” she said eventually, and John reflected on how well she kept up the reassuring act even when she was clearly lying. “It’s just that Sherlock actually seemed rather bothered by this one, and then that nice Sheriff Lestrade and Sherlock’s brother told the whole town to be on their guard. You weren’t planning on getting anything done today, were you?”

John stared at her. “Er…no.”

“Just as well, I don’t think anybody’s accepting visitors. Like I said, Angelo’s Saloon. Oh, and here.” She reached into a drawer and pulled out a box, which she handed to him. John cautiously opened the lid, and then stared at the carefully organised stack of ammunition. “Just in case,” she told him. “I find you always run short just when you need it.”

John nodded dumbly.

“Well, good luck, dear.”

“You too,” he mumbled, as he shouldered his Winchester – having retrieved it from where it had lain untouched since getting here – and showed himself out.

\----------

Mrs Hudson hadn’t been kidding: the streets were absolutely deserted. (Not that there were all that many, but that just made it more noticeable.) The whole way to Angelo’s, John didn’t see a single person, save for the odd face peering around a window frame. The silence felt heavy, as if it might press him face-down into the dusty ground. John generally didn’t consider himself the nervous type, yet he found himself fingering the grip of his pistol, just in case.

Angelo’s looked just as unwelcoming as every other building in town. Turned out the saloon actually had some rags to pass for curtains, where the windows weren’t still boarded up from what looked like months ago.

Carefully he stepped inside, and immediately saw Angelo piling up boxes of what was most likely ammunition on the bar, overseen by Lestrade and his deputy, the latter scowling up at Sherlock, who was crouched by the window at the top of the stairs with the air of a child waiting for a surprise.

“What’s going on?” he asked Lestrade.

“Moriarty.”

John frowned, recognising the word. “Sherlock never said what that is.”

“More like who. You could say he runs a gang of outlaws around here.”

“‘Could’?”

“Well, more like gang _s_. Every time we run someone down, Sherlock traces them back to this guy.”

“I reckon he likes it,” Donovan butts in. “Him and Moriarty. Same as how they talk. Like attracts like, if you know what I mean.”

John had a horrible feeling he did.

“Oh, don’t look like that. You only just rolled in; you don’t know him like you think you do.”

“Maybe,” John allowed, moving away before she could go on. The saloon was practically deserted – he guessed that most people were holed up wherever they had the most ammo. While he might not have known Moriarty, he recognised the signs of a town readying itself for a shoot-out. (Come to think of it, John had probably been involved in a few too many himself if he knew how to recognise them that easily.)

“Well?”

“Well what?” Sherlock asked, sounded more than slightly irritated to be interrupted from his exciting activity of watching out of the window.

“Moriarty. I’m guessing he sent you the note Mrs Hudson mentioned?”

Sherlock spared him a glance. “Apparently he actually wants to meet. Says we have some catching up to do.”

“Wait, this is the same man who stood there while someone was shot right in front him.”

“On his orders,” Sherlock confirmed.

“How do you know him?”

“Through his work. The stagecoach poisoner, for example. Moriarty seems to like being involved in anything interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“As opposed to the dullness we normally have.”

“Sherlock… Are you enjoying this? Because – ”

He was cut off by Sherlock’s intake of breath, and followed his gaze down to the street.

And John had heard stories. Everybody had. But despite having been travelling from town to town throughout the last few years, he had never actually seen that one man in black slowly riding down the middle of the deserted street, tumbleweed and all. It made quite an impression.

When he came to the saloon, he pushed himself off, and tied up his horse by the watering trough – John tried very hard not to think about the parallels – as if this was a perfectly normal ride into a deserted and well-armed town. Then John flinched as he turned and looked straight up at them.

“I know you’re up there, Sherlock,” he sang out – actually sang, John had not been expecting that. “Come on down. I just want to talk.”

“Like hell you are,” Lestrade snarled, appearing behind them. “Sherlock, you are not going out there.” 

“Why not?” Sherlock asked, hardly looking fazed at all by this. 

“Because he will _kill you_ ,” Lestrade said slowly, as if explaining the concept to an idiot. “And this is the closest we’ve ever come to him. I’m not letting him get away, not this time.”

“Why don’t we just shoot him?” Donovan demanded. Before any of them could stop her, she had her gun at the ready, aimed out of the nearest window. However, evidently somebody was quicker off the mark, since a shot rang out before she could even squeeze the trigger. Almost immediately, she was collapsing back, her own bullet vanishing into the air over the opposite buildings – some of which, it turned out, had already been infiltrated by Moriarty’s people, judging by the ensuing rain of gunfire that followed.

Lestrade hissed a curse, by Donovan’s side in an instant, as John dragged Sherlock to the floor as shot after shot filled the air with achingly familiar sounds, puncturing holes in the doors and leaving mark after mark in the front. John blinked as a hole suddenly appeared in the floor right before his eyes, but he could already feel the eerie calm he recognised from countless battles settling over him as he carried on down the stairs to where Donovan was lying. 

“Well?” Lestrade demanded.

John ran a quick, battle-trained eye over her. “She’ll be fine,” he said, almost certain he was telling the truth. The bullet had hit her hand, dead centre – they’d been aiming to make sure she wouldn’t just be making that shot, but any others besides.

Lestrade looked at him sceptically. Donovan bit around a word John didn’t think he’d ever heard a woman say before. “I’ll be fine, sir. I shoot just as well with my left.” 

At least now she was the one getting the look. “You don’t have to prove anything, Sally.” 

“Forgive me, sir, but yes I do.” 

With that, she pushed herself up to a crouch and joined John by the closest window. They exchanged the briefest of nods – acknowledgement, reassurance, determination – and opened fire.

\----------

John could not believe this.

He had been in town a grand total of almost six days, if that. And that was far too short a time for him to now find himself crouched by the wall in the saloon, trying to reload his pistols as fast as possible as the front was peppered with bullets. His Winchester was still leaning against the wall at his side – right now John was more concerned about quantity than quality. Besides, he had it on very good authority that when it came to hand guns he didn’t lose much when it came to the latter.

Lestrade apparently took the opposite approach. When he bent over to reload, John nudged his own rifle towards him. “Aren’t your pistols loaded?”

“Of course,” Lestrade said, sounding almost offended. “I like to save them up.”

Then they both had to launch themselves in opposite directions as the wood between them was blasted by a particularly lucky shot – or unlucky, depending on your point of view.

“What do you reckon’s going on here?”

John leaned out to fire off two quick shots – in a slightly detached way he noted that both were accompanied by yells of rather satisfyingly obvious pain – before he answered the question. “Knowing Sherlock, they really do want to talk.” Another break for shooting. “A lot.”

Lestrade nodded in acknowledgement as he fired off a shot towards someone who didn’t duck fast enough. “Bloody mess, this,” he muttered. “I did my best for my town, and then Moriarty just swans in and all this happens.”

“It’s not over yet,” John reminded him, cursing as he realised he was temporarily out of ammo but with a clear shot. Lestrade covered him as he ran for the bar and grabbed what he could. “You can still fix it after it’s over.”

“Depends on how it ends, doesn’t it?”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You sure about that?” Lestrade looked over as John threw himself against the wall next to him, reloading as fast as he could. “I know I asked before, but…why do you trust Sherlock so much?”

John figured he could do him the dignity of actually considering the question. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I just do.”

“You flatter me.” Apparently Sherlock had deigned to join them. “You realise this would stop if I went out.”

“No!” they said at the same time.

“John, you only just came here, you don’t _understand_ what – ”

Lestrade held up a finger, cutting him off abruptly. “You hear that?”

They all crouched there in silence for a moment. “No,” John admitted.

“Exactly. It’s quiet. Too quiet, for my liking.”

Looking on the positive side, this did not last for long. On the negative, John then heard that voice again – one he doubted he would forget for a long time.

“Come _on_ , Sherlock. I just want to _talk_.”

“I’m sure,” John muttered. He turned to comment to Sherlock, but stopped when he noticed that Sherlock’s expression looked more intrigued than anything else. “No,” he hissed.

Sherlock didn’t even look at him.

“ _No_.” John reached out to grab him by the shoulder, because damn it, Sherlock was not going to ignore him on this one. “You are not going out there.”

This did earn Sherlock’s attention, if only a very small part: a sigh and the response, “You’re not a part of this, John. You never were.”

It felt like he’d been shot. Again. He felt his grip on Sherlock’s arm go slack, which of course was all he needed to stand up, right where Moriarty could see him. Numbly John noticed that this was not immediately greeted by the sound of a gunshot and a falling body, so clearly both of them were insane. How nice.

Instead, all he heard was Moriarty’s satisfied cry of “There you are!”

“The hell are you – ” Lestrade started, only to be cut off as Sherlock side-stepped his hand as he tried to grab him and walked out into the street. “…He’s dead,” he announced, looking probably as stunned as John. 

“Looks that way,” John agreed, staring blankly back into the saloon without really seeing anything.

“I – what are they doing?”

At the sound of Lestrade’s confusion, John managed to pull himself around to peer over the window sill. To his surprise, he was not just in time to see one or both of them die.

They were standing about ten paces apart in the street, looking eerily similar from glimpses as the excuse for a curtain fluttered back and forth in the wind, with their faces obscured and almost matching black hats. Frankly though, John was more concerned by the fact that neither of them seemed to have their guns out.

“Oh, this is good,” Moriarty said with obvious glee. “I’ve been following your work, you know, same way you’ve been following mine. Have to say, though, I’m a little bit disappointed.”

“I didn’t realise I was trying to impress you.”

“And yet sometimes you do! Funny how that works. But Sherlock Sherlock _Sherlock_ , bit of a waste, isn’t it? So much you could be doing. You’re just like me, after all.”

John tried not to wince at that. Sherlock’s face, if anything, looked worryingly amused.

“I doubt that.”

“Really? You’re not at all interested in what you _could_ be? What _we_ could be? You might say we were made for each other.”

Lestrade reached out just in time to hold John down. At his glare, he hissed, “Not yet.” However, as the silence stretched out, John wondered how long he could hold him, as he took the opportunity to reload.

“I could just shoot you.” Unfortunately, Sherlock did not follow up on this inspired piece of normal sensible thinking.

“Well, then you’d get to see the look of surprise on my face.” Moriarty made a corresponding over-the-top performance, which for some reason came off as more unsettling than John might have expected. Was there anything genuine about him? “Because I would be, Sherlock, I really would. So?”

Another horrible pause. Then, “And I strike you as somebody willing to work with a partner?”

“Well, I saw you with that acquisition of yours. Little Johnny.” John froze. “Seem to have taken a shine to him. Don’t worry, I can fix that.”

“I will stop you, you know.”

John let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

Moriarty really did look disappointed now. It looked as fake as anything else though – much more overstated than it needed to be. “Oh, that’s a _shame_ , it really is. Because you can’t be allowed to continue. You just can’t.”

In a flash, Moriarty’s gun was there in his hand, and aimed steadily right between Sherlock’s eyes. Apparently he was much faster on the draw, effectively pinning Sherlock’s hand by his side. “Come out, Johnny,” he sang out. “I doubt you really want me to shoot him right here.”

John hesitated. Lestrade stared at him. “You really think it makes any difference if you go out there too?”

“I can’t let him shoot him.”

“And you’ll stop him? What makes you the hero?”

“I didn’t say I was,” John reminded him. 

Then, before Lestrade could stop him, he too had stood up and let himself out.

“Atta boy, Johnny!” Moriarty said with clear glee, keeping his gun trained on Sherlock. Not for the first time, John reflected on Sherlock’s tendency to have people point guns at him.

A glance up at the building opposite revealed two men in clear view with impressive-looking rifles, one trained on John, the other on Sherlock. 

Slowly, as if this was all a mild inconvenience – and judging by the circumstances when they hadn’t even met yet, John realised that probably was how he saw it – Sherlock looked up, dragging his gaze lazily from one shooter to the next, and then back at Moriarty, eyebrow raised. John made a promise to himself that he did not get shot in the head (or anywhere else) in the next five minutes he would use his newly appreciated life to wipe that bored expression off the bastard’s damn face.

“This is getting unnecessarily complicated, don’t you think?” Sherlock said, in the same voice he might have used had he and Moriarty simply been having a drink together. (Moments after the image entered John’s head, he amended it to no doubt include some sort of ‘game’ revolving around poisoning each others’ drinks without being caught.)

“I just wanted a simple conversation, man to man, Sherlock,” Moriarty said with a slightly exasperated air, as if this huge stand-off was Sherlock’s fault (which John hadn’t exactly ruled out yet). “You were the one who got others involved. You were the one who made it _messy_.” Evidently ‘messy’ was the most intolerable thing of all – eerily reminiscent of Sherlock’s declaration of ‘boring’. 

As if the whole world had grown achingly slow, John watched Moriarty tip his head to one side – still looking almost disappointed – and raise his hand to signal the men overhead, and told himself firmly that he would not close his eyes, he was not going to go out as a coward, and he looked over to Sherlock to try and somehow indicate in their last moments that this was entirely his fault –

\- meaning that when he heard shots fired, it took him a moment to realise that they hadn’t been aimed at them.

John was still alive, and unless Sherlock didn’t even die the same way as everybody else (not impossible), so was he.

He was only more surprised when he turned to look at Moriarty, to see him lying on the ground in a way that definitely looked dead.

While of course Sherlock got there first, John was only a step behind him, staring down in disbelief at the corpse. It was mildly satisfying to notice that Moriarty had died looking very surprised indeed.

A glance up towards the shooters’ building revealed nothing, meaning that either they’d turned and fled already, or they were dead too. Either way, the ‘multiple shots’ suggested they wouldn’t be trying again in a hurry.

It was only when he looked down at Sherlock, and noticed his gaze fixed somewhere behind him, that he thought to look back at the saloon.

Turning slowly, he saw Lestrade standing in the doorway, with Donovan just behind him and his handguns still drawn – although now lowered – and smoking.

Probably their surprise was obvious from their expressions – John was fairly certain this was a turn of events Sherlock hadn’t been expecting, given his precious confrontation, and a check revealed that yes, Sherlock looked stunned (a fact he would never ever admit to, no matter how many times John would bring it up).

Lestrade, however, just shrugged, holstering both guns. 

“I told you: this is my town.”

\----------

Moriarty and his ‘friends’ were given an obscure burial off the outskirts from which Anderson was mysteriously absent – in fact, most of the town seemed to have better things to do – and, events coming full circle, John once again found himself back in Angelo’s Saloon with a drink and a head full of heavy thoughts. After all, there wasn’t anywhere left to go.

Which was really the problem.

Lestrade sighed, in the manner of a man who hadn’t just saved his town single-handedly and hadn’t been receiving free drinks for the last week. “You’re heading out again?”

John nodded.

“Got to say, I’ll be sorry to see the back of you. Not a bad shot _and_ first person to keep Sherlock under control.”

“I’m honoured.”

“You should be.” Lestrade took another sip of his whiskey. “We could probably use you around here.”

“I don’t think so,” John assured him with a smile. “They’ve got you, haven’t they?”

Lestrade obviously tried to smile at that, although John could tell he was too modest to actually accept the compliment, so he offered him a change of subject: “How’s Donovan?”

“Mixed,” Lestrade said, obviously happy to get off the subject of himself. “Hand’s never going to be the same, Stanford’s told her that much, but she’s practicing all the time with her left. She’s not going to stop doing what she did, I can tell you that.”

“I didn’t really think she would.”

There was a slightly awkward silence as they both finished their drinks and stared at the empty glasses, wondering just what was supposed to come next.

“Well,” Lestrade said, and held out his hand, “good luck out there.”

John smiled and shook it. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome in town anytime.”

“I might take you up on that,” John said, and was rather surprised to discover that he meant it.

\----------

Truth be told, John wasn’t entirely sure whether he wanted to say goodbye to Sherlock or not. The man was quite possibly clinically insane and had almost gotten him killed in some rather spectacular ways, but then again, that wasn’t so different from most people he’d met on the road.

It was probably just as well then that the decision was taken out of his hands. Sherlock had a bit of a talent for that.

“Where are you going?”

John didn’t even bother looking around. “Got to catch up with my regiment, remember?”

“Are you honestly going to keep up that pretence?”

Frowning, John turned around to see Sherlock leaning casually against the wall of the saloon, eyebrow raised, confident as ever, as if he hadn’t been in a fight to the death recently. “Are you saying I’m a liar?”

“On this occasion, yes.”

Blunt as ever. John sighed. “I am following them, mostly. At least, I’m headed where they probably are. I’m just not actually looking for them.”

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock looked less than satisfied with this response. “If you’re not actively searching for them, where are you going?” 

John frowned again, this time in confusion. If he didn’t know any better, he might have said that that question sounded far more like _Why are you leaving?_

He shrugged. “I don’t like staying in one place too long. It goes…grey.” Immediately he winced at his word choice, but when he looked over again Sherlock didn’t look disgusted, which was something. In fact, come to think of it, he probably had a very good idea of what John was talking about. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “I’m on the move anyway, so following them is as good a way as any. So…nowhere in particular, I guess.”

“‘Nowhere in particular’.” Sherlock appeared to give this some thought. “That does sound distinctly less dull than here. I don’t suppose you would mind the company.”

John blinked in surprise, yet again feeling the now horribly familiar sensation of having skipped something important. “What?” He seemed to have spent the ten or so days saying little else, and if he’d heard right, he might be getting even more practice. “You want to come with me?”

“I would think that was obvious,” Sherlock said dismissively. “I’m sure you understand that staying here is hardly appealing.”

“Right. I thought you could handle yourself just fine?”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t dull.”

John allowed himself a very small smile – nothing too wide, nothing to show that, actually, this sounded more than good to him. Not yet. “I assume you have a ride.”

“Of course.”

John examined the animal Sherlock indicated. Funnily enough, he hadn’t seen Sherlock anywhere near one the entire time he had known him. Not that that had been such a long time, but still, a horse tended to be something you met relatively quickly. Furthermore, when they both mounted their rides, he noticed that Sherlock looked rather uneasy – no doubt uncomfortable with the idea of trusting an animal with a mind of its own to do precisely what he wanted.

“Is that yours?”

“Yes.”

John looked at him.

“Technically my family’s.”

John kept looking at him.

“Technically Mycroft’s, can we go?”

Now John let the smile he’d been holding back show through in its entirety. “Absolutely.” He reached up and pulled the brim of his hat down to shield his eyes from the sun as it sank lower in the sky. “How about…that way?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said immediately, clearly not looking where John was pointing, but instead watching him. 

Which was how John found himself riding out of town as he had many times before, adventures and acquaintances at his back and the unknown up ahead as far as the eye could see. The only difference this time – for the first time – was the company. 

The sun was setting and life felt good.

It had been another fine day in the West.


End file.
